Electricity consumption and car sales are an excellent indicator for the economy... and both are coming down! Countries like China (High Order Production Countries) will suffer more from the depression. The situation can be compared to the United Kingdom versus the USA during the Great Depression of the 1930's.

What does matter is that right now, the best of the best gold stocks are so undervalued that all you need to do is load up and hold on—for a shot at "vertical" profits once the gold market recovers. Junior miners, which are companies that specialize in exploration or small-scale mining, are in a position to sit out a slump because they often have little debt, few big costs and the ability to hire out their machinery, such as drills. That is unlike the industry giants, from Barrick, Newmont, Freeport-McMoRan Inc. to Rio Tinto PLC, which have big debt piles and large, high-cost operations to maintain. Those qualities have allowed the junior mining sector to defy predictions of widespread bankruptcies.